Bootleggers, Modernists, and Bolsheviks Series 1995-96

These paintings started out as a group of collage/watercolor studies using random vintage baseball cards for image sources to create a set of portraits of the Apostles and other significant New Testament figures. The series title, “Bootleggers, Modernists, and Bolsheviks,” comes from a sermon of the same title by the fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday about the perceived root causes for continual sin in early 20th century America. Which to me seemed like the perfect title for this metaphorical investigation about the paradoxical nature of man in his search for spiritual truth. William “Billy” Sunday (1862 –1935) was a popular professional baseball player in the National League during the 1880s. Converting to evangelical Christianity in 1891 he left baseball to become one of the most celebrated, influential, and conflicted American evangelists during the first two decades of the 20th century.